Maggie Morse Ethan Frome Essay Miss Elliot December 6, 2002 “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton is about a man named Ethan and his struggle to find happiness. He lives in a run down farm with his wife Zeena who thinks that she is sick. After Taking care of Zeena for six years they hire Mattie to help around the house, Ethan falls in love with her and they have a relationship suspicious to Zeena. This novel is quite similar to “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Some of the main similarities are, affairs outside their marriages and physical memories resulting from them as well as unhappy endings. With Ethan’s mother very sick, his cousin Zeena came to relieve Ethan and become her aunts nurse.
Ethan’s mother died and after the funeral after moving out Ethan asked Zeena to marry her out of his fear of being alone in the farm house. After the marriage Zeena became sick and nobody knew with what and when Mattie came to help around the house. Ethan fell in love with her having another relationship while he was married. In the Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne had an arranged marriage with Roger Chillingworth who sent her to a colony in Massachusetts before him. After two years of not seeing her husband she had an affair with her minister Reverend Dimmsdale, while she was married.
After some time Zeena became suspicious of Mattie and Ethan and sent Mattie away, saying she needed hired help. Ethan confessed his love to Mattie who felt the same way. They wanted to run away together but Ethan was a poor man and could not afford a train ticket, suicide seemed to be the only solution of getting away from Zeena. Ethan and Mattie planed on crashing their sled into a tree suspecting it would kill them, but it only left Mattie Crippled from the neck down and Ethan with a horrible limp. In Hester’s case the result of her affair was a child, Pearl. Both these were a constant memory of what they had done.
The Essay on Characterization Ethan Frome Mattie Zeena Life
... causes Ethan to write the letter to Zeena, think about leaving Zeena, to defy his wife by falling in love with Mattie, confusion ... silent" couple is a significant factor in Ethan's miserable marriage. While Zeena complains about everything, Ethan takes in all the misery and decides ... be with Mattie, Zeena s younger, energetic cousin who comes to the Frome house to help out. At one point, Ethan gets ...
Ethan wanted to spend the rest of his life with Mattie, and he got his wish only it included Zeena. Because of their injuries Zeena had to take care of Mattie who was unable to do most anything. All three of them lived on the farm alone and almost isolated from the rest of the town. In the “Scarlet Letter” Hester decided to go back to England with Reverend Dimmsdale. Roger Chillingworth found out about their plans and booked passage on the same ship.
Before leaving Boston Dimmsdale confessed his sin to the town and falls dead, a year later Chillingworth dies. Hester returns to Boston to live in her cottage, alone and when she dies she is buried next to Dimmsdale sharing a tombstone that says “A.” Thus concludes the depressing tales of two fictional strangers in two different times. Ethan and Hester loved another person who was not their spouse, and because of their affairs have constant reminders. Ethan’s reminder was his crippled love and his handicap, Hester’s a beautiful child. Unlike most stories these did not end happily ever after and seem more realistic than most fairy tales.
While fictional it seems so real, and the books can teach important lessons to the readers.
